To take these high-resolution images of individual snowflakes, Nathan Myhrvold and his collaborators built a special camera. Their apparatus keeps the snowflakes chilled despite the strong illumination cast on them. Keep reading
Tag: freezing
Filming the Brinicle
It may have been 10 years since the BBC filmed the first timelapse of a growing brinicle, but the footage is just as amazing now as it was then! This Keep reading
Fractal Frost
As nightly temperatures drop in the northern latitudes, many of us are beginning to wake up to frosty patterns on leaves, windows, and cars. Frost‘s spread is a complex dance Keep reading
Freezing Splats
In fluid physics, there’s often a tug of war between different effects. For droplets falling onto a surface colder than their freezing point, the hydrodynamics of impact, sudden heat transfer, Keep reading
Fallstreak Holes
Occasionally clouds appear to have a hole in them; these are known as fallstreak holes or hole-punch clouds. To form, the water droplets in the cloud must be supercooled; in Keep reading
Lake Stars
As snow-covered frozen lakes melt, stars appear on their surface. These lake stars form around holes in the ice where (relatively) warm water seeps up into the slush layer. The Keep reading
Dual Structure of Water
Water is so ubiquitous in our lives that we rarely recognize just how strange it is. For example, when pure liquid water is supercooled well below its freezing temperature, it Keep reading
The Best of FYFD 2020
2020 was certainly a strange year, and I confess that I mostly want to congratulate all of us for making it through and then look forward to a better, happier, Keep reading
Rings of Ice
Heavy rains followed by a sudden freeze can produce icy puddles like this one. Because the pool was shallow to begin with, it likely froze rapidly. As the temperature continued Keep reading
Freezing Splats
When a drop hits a surface colder than its freezing point, there’s a competition between retraction and solidification that determines the final shape of the splat. For many materials, like Keep reading